editorials August 01, 2019 August 01, 2019

Pegvisomant for acromegaly: does it always works?

DOI: 10.20945/2359-3997000000163

Two studies published in this present issue of the Archives of Endocrinology and Metabolism, by Natalia Garcia Basavilbaso () and coworkers, as well as the one by Cesar Boguszewski and coworkers (), describe the treatment response in real-life of pegvisomant (PEGV) therapy in acromegaly patients, including aspects of safety and efficacy.

Taken together, these data reflect the everyday practice results of 184 patients from 27 dedicated centers from Brazil and Argentina. These two essays are essential and very welcomed as they report indeed what is happening in real-life with a compound that, in theory, as well as during registration studies, somewhat promised to be efficacious in controlling disease activity in virtually all acromegaly patients (,). However, as was also reported in both older and newer publications from the analyses of data coming from the Pfizer Inc Initiated Global, non-interventional safety surveillance study of long-term treatment with PEGV (ACROSTUDY^tm), the efficacy of PEGV in normalizing serum IGF-I levels apparently does not exceed about two-thirds of treated patients (,).

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